Tablet PC or a smart phone.  Every body know what’s a tablet.  Even the artists know about it. It’s odd, isn’t it?! 🙂  What does Dropbox or Google drive with tablets and artist of any kind?

Well, it does! Because tablets are such useful devices for artists, especially for visual artists . Besides usual tasks :  web browsing, email,  social networks etc. a visual artist can take notes , photos, make sketches, color studies, or even true digital paintings!  Or they may read an art treaty in pdf or any e-book format.

And the most important, you can do all of these while you’re at the bathroom… like me now when I’m writing this blog post 🙂

But all this stuff , visual artists and tablet PC related ( OK OK and iPad about some make allegations that’s only another kind of tablet), need space …lot of space. And this space has its price, quite big price – see price by storage capacity difference between iPad models – and miniSD card can be lost easily  – well, you’re “lucky” from this part if you’re an iPad owner! iPad don’t have any slot card at all 🙂  nor USB or miniUSB …OK OK iPads are not tablets 🙂  – then you start looking for alternatives to solve the lack of space issue.

Also, what if you are in a trip using your mobile device and you suddenly need a file to get your work done,  that’s stored in your PC or another device? What? Put a spell on your tablet?

You’re an artist anyway and most probably your head is up on the clouds. That’s nice for you as cloud is the answer for our storage space issue and sharing files between all of your devices.

Data storage in the cloud…Sounds pretty artsy doesn’t it ?! Mobility, security…. All you need is data and Internet connection.

Now what available services are on the market? Lots of them.

I use and recommend you three of them, all three FREE and having dedicate apps for iPad and Android tablets: Copy, Google Drive and DropBox.  OK OK, yes, I know! iPad world has its own cloud entitled iCloud of free 5 GB / account just for their Precious 🙂  but you never know whe you’ll need extra storage space…so:

1. Copy: the newest storage service I discovered and signed up for. It offers an impressive amount of 15 GB for free! Sign up for a Copy account  through this link and you’ll get extra 5GB ! So you will have a total of 20 GB storage space for free !!
   Copy is a nice, easy to use online service and from what I saw, it is focused on facilitate their user for collaborative work and file sharing. Yet, the main purpose of store and sharing data between your devices still exist and work very nice.
2. Dropbox gives you 2 GB when you sign up for an free account then it offers you a series of ways to upgrade for free storage capacity for up to 18 GB. Most of that space you can get it by referral. So, if you’re a social artist, you can grab all of those 18 GB
   I’m not social 🙂 so I got only 2,9 GB on Dropbox servers.
   You may ask Why then I recommend Dropbox…well because I use it – hahaha – and it’s so so simple to use it.  Here’s the link to Dropbox  ,  here to Apple appstore and here to Android app.
3. Google Drive is the cloud storage service by , surprise! Google -haha! Oh gosh, I’ve just realized that Microsoft may offer their own cloud! Let’s google for it 🙂 link  
   OK so Microsoft has its own cloud service as I suspected … well, well, only that Bill Gates wants all the sky ! Why else he has entitled it  SkyDrive 🙂
   I think it’s obvious how big Microsoft fan I am … and Apple, too , how can I forget those with their Precious
   Google & Microsoft ,  cool ! Lets make a comparison:
   – Drive  offers 15 GB for free. Space is shared across your Gmail and Picassa accounts. The maximum uploaded file size is 10 GB
4. – SkyDrive offers 7 GB for free and you can upload files of size no bigger than 2 GB each.  Oh, poor Microsoft, they don’t want to offer too much storage for Android tablets … they know that Android is Linux basically !  Bad Micro$oft ! Bad!

Back to the issue, …of course there are many other storage in the cloud services out there. Most of them offering a starting free account and payed plan – somewhere between 2  and 10 bucks per month for a home user –  if you need more storage space.

If you want a payed service, then look for one who offer unlimited storage space. Yes, such “animals” do exist out there in the wild 🙂

MyPCbackup.com ,  it’s such an animal and  it keep your unlimited data for a fee as small as 2 fifty-cent / month ! Quite a bargain !

Well, it would be wise to do some research before signing up for a payed account. It would be a bargain and costs a little but money is money and all of them is yours.

It’s good to know that regarding server data safety , the best services are offered by those who keeps data on Amazon S3 servers. If they encrypt data, too, that’s a great addition.

So, Have you got a tablet PC? OK OK, ..or a Precious iPad ? Do you take lots of pictures with it and draw sketches, color studies or digital paintings – I’ve just heard those with Precious in hands yelling : We have Artrage ! We have Artrage! …. Damn! and double damn ß$#@!% !!Well, I’m calmed down now…..

Hey ! What’s this noise? Why all of you (with or without a Precious iPad / iPhone in hands) are yelling at me about something like Flick or Flack …oh I see… You want to tell me about Flicker…no?  oh, sorry , it’s Flickr from Yahoo.
Yes, I know! I know! Flicker offers you 1000 GB (1TB) for free!
BUT that huge space is for IMAGES & VIDEO ONLY and its main purpose it’s not of data storage. Yet, a great service for visual artists.

So, are you an artist touching that thing who is supposed to be some sort of computer ? Then you will soon need more storage space in the cloud.

I wish you great inspiration,
Daniel